It looks like he's compensating for something

The latest oddball request from a current NodeJS project I’m working on:

When the application starts, I want to be able to include a command line switch for the number of threads to start. Something like --threads 4.

Now, this isn’t a particularly difficult request. And, I completely understand the request. Working with IT at BIGCORP, Inc. is a PITA. I have found very little in this world slower than an IT department at any sufficiently large corporation.

My issue with the request isn’t the request itself; my issue is that it is the wrong request, being made for the wrong reasons.

The request is not impossible. I’ve done something like this before for starting up queue listeners. It takes use of Node’s cluster library. I wrote a program that used RabbitMQ messages, and we wanted control over the number of subscribers. In NodeJS, this looks something like the following.

This demo is a very brief example. You should be listening on each thread for "disconnect", "error", and "exit" events. Log those events and start a new worker.

Taking advantage of Docker

This particular project isn’t a queue subscriber, though. It’s an ExpressJS application, and we’re already using Docker on the project. If you want more servers, simply deploy more containers.

There is obviously still catch. The nginx configuration needs to have the same number of backend servers and the same assigned ports as the number of running application containers. I’m sure if we’re intelligent enough, we can script this, keeping everything in check.

Conclusion

Can we do the request as asked? Sure. We’re smart. But should we? No. I don’t think so. Every line of code we write is a line we have to test and maintain. We have other tools available for managing how our applications scale.